Thirty years ago exactly the first version, 0.01, of Linux went online. It was created by a Finnish student who was just 21 at the time.
A few days earlier, on August 25, in a newsgroup (an online discussion group) had sent a historic email to say that since April he was working on a new operating system and that he intended to do a small survey to find out what users would like to see there. He also wrote: “It will not be a big thing or a professional thing, it’s just a hobby ”, with a rare humility. Because, thirty years later, it must be said, Linux has become just “a big and professional thing”.
There are several sites that report statistics on how much Linux is present in what we do every day and they are all quite impressive, also because Linux is hardly ever talked about: it is not newsworthy. I mention a few. The first: Linux is the server operating system of 96.5% of the first million sites in the world. Translated: nine hundred and sixty-five thousand sites of the first million use Linux. Let’s move on to the second statistic: about 80% of smartphones use Linux in some way. Somehow why a debate is underway among the experts to determine if Android, Google’s mobile operating system, can really define itself based on the Linux kernel, or built on top of the Linux kernel, or derived from the Linux kernel, or poetically, “the Linux dream come true”.
The third and final statistic is the most impressive: since 2018, all the top 500 supercomputers in the world use Linux, and there is no discussion on this. Because this absolute domination is an interesting topic that tells us a lot about the true meaning of Linux and what impact it has had in our lives even if it is not on our personal computers (the desktop market share is very small). In short, until 20 years ago most supercomputers used Unix, but Linux has taken over basically because it is open source: it is an open system whose evolution tens of thousands of people participate with the commitment to share all the advances. . This is revealed indispensable in the case of supercomputers, which are very powerful machines with a very high degree of customization: with an open system all modifications become easier, faster and cheaper.
It should be added that in these 30 years there have not been only victories and mistakes have been made (here Antonio Dini makes an analysis to read). But we shouldn’t forget the fundamental point: one day a 21-year-old student as a hobby, but with remarkable ambition and incredible perseverance, changed everything and it won because it changed its paradigm: while everyone was thinking about monetizing, he chose an open, transparent, collaborative and free system. Pure utopia realized.
Without Linux we would live in a different world.
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